Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/137



his position at a wide loophole, low down near the centre of the barricade, Connie Morgan could see the yelling, leaping figures as they sprang straight toward him across the clearing, firing as they ran. Mechanically, the boy worked the lever of his carbine, sighting and firing as in a dream. Above the crash and din of the rifles and the war-whoops of the painted savages, other sounds broke upon his ears—sharp, high-pitched shrieks of pain—the singing whine of bullets—the heavy breathing of Toad Jones, who had climbed to the top of the barricade almost directly above him—the defiant roars of Tex Gordon, who was keeping two rifles hot while an old man loaded. On came the Mooseheads. Connie sighted and fired, first at one painted form and then at another—the whole clearing seemed alive with howling fiends who advanced in short rushes, dodging now behind